Albert D. Hackebarth
was born in Berlin, Germany on June 20, 1854.1
He played extra horn in the Bavarian State Opera
Hofkapelle Orchestra (Munich) from 1878-1880. That
section included Franz Strauss (1822 - 1905), principal,
and also the brothers Franz Xaver Reiter and Josef
Reiter. Mr. Hackebarth emigrated to the United States,
arriving in New York on June 22, 1880. He became a
naturalized citizen of the United States on April 14,
1896, in Boston.

Boston
In 1882, two years after his arrival in the United
States, Mr. Hackebarth, now twenty-eight, was hired as
second horn in the Boston Symphony under conductor Georg
Henschel, replacing H.A. Gumpricht.2 This was only the Orchestra's second
season, but it was known even before the first season
that preference would be given to younger musicians.
Prior to the first season, founder, financier, and
effectively owner of the B.S.O., Henry Lee Higginson had
written a statement of intent on forming the new
orchestra. Included in that statement was the following:
"At present my belief is that we shall incline after one
season to the following course:...to engage eight or ten
musicians of a superior grade, younger than those here,
at a fixed salary also, who should be ready at my call
to play anywhere; - and then to draw around them the
best of our Boston musicians, thus refreshing and
renewing the present orchestra, and getting more nearly
possession of it, and so to give more and more concerts,
governing ourselves by the demand here and elsewhere."
According to Mr. Henschel, "In order not to make 'böses
Blut' - as Mr. Higginson, who was and excellent German
scholar, put it - i.e. to say, in order not to give
offence at first, Mr. Higginson advised me to engage for
the first season only the available local players." Near
the end of the first season, Mr. Higginson sent a
contract letter of invitation to current and prospective
members for the coming season, stating that they would
be required to be present for all services on four days
each week and not take any outside jobs on those days.
This was regarded by some as heavy-handed at the time,
and was perhaps another reason that a total of twenty
first-season members (including Mr. Gumpricht) did not
return in the fall of 1882. (Five of those did return in
later seasons, however.)

Mr. Henschel conducted the first three seasons of the
B.S.O., and then in 1884 returned to Europe to resume
his singing career. He was succeeded by Wilhelm Gericke,
of Vienna. According to Mr. Higginson:

"...he came, took up his work here, and did
his best, but after two concerts he said to me: 'You
have not an orchestra here. There are some musicians,
but it is hardly an orchestra.' Nevertheless, he
worked with them during that season, and produced
pretty good results. At the end of that time he went
back to Vienna, engaged an excellent concert-master
(Franz Kneisel) and a large number of good musicians,
and brought them here."

Mr. Gericke put it more bluntly:

"In that time, a number of old and
overworked musicians were in the Orchestra, no longer
fit for the demands of modern and more difficult
orchestral playing. Mr. Higginson thought they should
be replaced by younger elements and, when I went to
Europe, after my first season was over, he gave me the
order to import twenty new musicians - among them a
new Concert-master."

New York
It was probably due more to a better opportunity than to
Mr. Gericke's and Mr. Higgison's policies, that at that
point Mr. Hackebarth left his position as second horn
and returned to New York to become principal horn of the
New York Philharmonic, conducted by Theodore Thomas,
replacing Theodore Lotze. (He probably also became a
member of Mr. Thomas' other organizations which included
the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the newly-formed American
Opera Company, although that has not been established.)
Mr. Hackebarth remained in the Philharmonic until the
1889-90 season. He was also a member of Thomas'
sixty-six-piece orchestra and probably gave the American
premiere of Tchaikovsky"s Fifth Symphony on March 5,
1889. The following season on January 26, 1890, he was
featured as a soloist with the Thomas Orchestra at the
Lenox Lyceum Concert Hall. On February 26 he was the
guest of the Schubert Vocal Society, Newark, New Jersey,
with flutist Hugo Wittgenstein performing the Serenade
for horn and flute by Anton Emil Titl. On July 16 he
appeared with the Thomas Orchestra in Chicago on a
"popular ball-room program", once again performing
Titl's Serenade. He was also on the faculty of the
National Conservatory of Music of America, New York,
incorporated 1885.

In the spring of 1889, Mr. Hackebarth was a founding
member of the New York Reed Club, a woodwind quintet,
whose members included Joseph Schreurs, clarinet, Felix
Bour3,
oboe, Frédérick Rucquoy, Jr., flute, and John
Hellenberg, bassoon. Their first concert was held at
Chickering Hall on March 1, 1889 and included Miss
Virginia Rider and Miss Alma Hultkranz, soprano. The
review in The New York Times was generally
favorable:

The new club was heard in toto in a quintet
in F major by [Johann] Sobeck, and a pastoral by Liszt
arranged by [Eduard] Lassen. The members of the
organization are all good players, and their work was
excellently done. There is a danger, however, that an
evening of this kind of music would become monotonous.
Two or three numbers, however, in a miscellaneous
concert would have the charm of novelty, and would
certainly be enjoyable.4

The Club appeared two weeks later in a performance of
Schubert's Octet on a program of the Beethoven Quartet
of New York. Their second official concert on their own
behalf occurred at the end of the same month in
Chickering Hall, assisted by Miss Annie Lippincott,
soprano, Miss Virginia Rider, pianist, and Mr. R. Kohl,
basset horn, with Mr. Americo Gori as accompanist. The
program included a quintet by George Onslow, a Beetoven
Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, and
a quintet by Liszt. On April 10th, they
played at a musical reception hosted by Mrs. Nicholas
Fish. The following season they gave a concert with
members of Ovide Musin's Concert Company for the benefit
of the Société de Bienfaisance Belge. According to the New
York Herald, "The society and the concert deserved
a better audience than the handful of people who tried
to make up in vigor of applause for their lack of
numbers." The program included Beethoven's Quintet,
op.16 and "some minor pieces in a most delightful
fashion.5

Back to Boston
In the fall of 1890 Albert Hackebarth returned to the
Boston Symphony Orchestra to replace Josef Reiter as
principal horn, who had temporarily replaced his
brother, Xaver
Reiter, who had abruptly fled Boston for personal
reasons in January. As the Philadelphia Inquirer
put it, Xaver Reiter "left the orchestra for private
reasons of a domestic kind, and Mr. Hackebarth, formerly
with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, will blow the horn
in his stead." Perhaps the most interesting piece in his
first season was the premiere of the Suite for Strings
and Four Horns, in G minor, op. 8 by Boston composer,
Arthur Whiting, on March 14, 1891. This work, composed
in 1888, was no doubt originally intended for Xaver
Reiter before his unexpected departure. The other
members of the section were Julius Schneider, Edward
Schormann, and Carl A. Schumann. The Boston Sunday
Herald reviewed it as follows:

Another novelty claimed the attention of
the audience at last evening's concert, this being a
suite for the string orchestra and four horns by Mr.
Arthur Whiting of this city, the work having its first
public hearing on this occasion. It consists of six
short movements styled "Præambulus", (appasionato
assai), "Aria" (allegretto grazioso), "Scherzo"
(vivace e scherzando), "Romanze" (adagietto), and
Finale (moderato maestoso). Mr. Whiting wisely
confided his composition to Mr. Nikisch for
performance, and it received every possible attention
in the reading given.

The Suite shows evidence of the best work Mr. Whiting
has made public, and is a vastly interesting study
throughout. Much originality has been shown in the use
of the novel combination of instruments for which the
suite is composed, and the several movements are
admirably contrasted. The audience was evidently
impressed with the value of this novelty, and gave a
hearty commendation at its conclusion.

The highlights of the following season were the American
premieres of "Don Juan" by "that young musical radical"
Richard Strauss, on October 31, 1891, and later Dvorak's
Eighth Symphony (then numbered as the fourth). Reviewer
Elson in the Boston Daily Advertiser
called the Strauss "overswollen and full of roarings,
whether of ecstasy or pain it would be hard to say.
...the number of climaxes is rather bewildering ...The
modern orchestral tricks are too often resorted to; the
muted tones of the horn, the ugliest effects one can
evoke from the orchestra, are used with lavish hand..."
Of the performance, Mr. Elson wrote: "It was something
to go through so difficult a work without an upset, but
there was more of entusiasm than of precision in the
performance, and while the two or three catastrophes,
and the half dozen explosions with which the work is
garnished, were dramatically done, the wind instruments
were neither united in attack or well intoned, and the
horn in these days is a very persistent sinner, often
overblowing, and trying to make itself into a trombone,
like the toad that wanted to be an ox." In the Beethoven
Sixth Symphony that closed the program, Mr. Elson noted:
"In the finale the horn was unclear, and it made slips
in the preceding movements as well." In Mr. Hackebarth's
defense, he played the entire concert on a single F horn
and probably without an assistant.

Regarding the premier of the Dvorak Eighth Symphony on
February 27, 1892 the review in the Boston
Herald was generally favorable both of the
symphony and the performance. Once again, Mr.
Elson was critical of both: "Dvorak's new symphony
was a disappointment at its first hearing. It is not so
much a symphony as a fantasia on Slavonic folk music...
It seemed a pasticcia of folk music, each theme
leading to a tame and commonplace ending, not far
removed from the Italian cadence as exemplified in Verdi
in those young days when he deserved his patronymie...
The finale was more military, but suggested rather a
Tartar horde going out to battle than anything
European." Of the performance he wrote: "It was
generally well played, and certainly lost nothing of its
effect in Mr. Nikisch's hands. The horn played badly,
the trumpet overblew, and the flute work was excellent
while of course the phalanx of first violins carried
everything before them in their impetuous charge."

The orchestra's concert on October 22, 1892 included
Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Of this performance critic
Elson wrote that the main theme of the second movement
(andante cantabile) was "nobly played by the first
horn." The B.S.O. played it again in Brooklyn on
Novermber 4. As noted above, Mr. Hackebarth had no doubt
played the American premiere of this famous solo with
the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, in 1889

Soon after his return to Boston Mr.
Hackebarth became a member of the New England
Conservatory Music Club in its first (and apparently
only) season. In addition to himself the Club comprised
Carl Faelten, piano; Emil Mahr and Charles Mclaughlin,
violins; Daniel Kuntz, viola; Leo Schulz, cello; A.
Goldstein, bass; Charles Molé, flute; Oscar Reine, oboe;
Eustach Strasser, clarinet; F. H. Guenzel, bassoon; and
Heinrich Schuecker, harp. All but Reine and Faelton were
members of the B.S.O. in addition to being on the
faculty of the New England Conservatory. The Club gave
three concerts in the fall of 1890 at Union Hall; Mr.
Hackebarth and Mr. Faelten performed the Beethoven
Sonata on December 1. No further mention of the club has
been found. The program was repeated in Boston on the
Quartet's last concert of the season on April 27.

In the spring flutist Charles Molé formed the Molé
Chamber Music Concert Club, a woodwind quintet,
comprising the wind players listed above, but with
B.S.O. oboist Auguste Sautet in place of Mr. Reine. In
their first season the Molé Club presented three
concerts in March and April of 1891. In September Mr.
Hackebarth was advertised as the horn player for the
Club's second (and last) season, however, by the time of
the first concert he had resigned and was replaced by
the new B.S.O. associate horn, Franz
Hain.

On January 31, 1895 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and
then repeated on February 18, at Union Hall, Boston, Mr.
Hackebarth, together with other members of the Boston
Symphony assisted the very popular Kneisel Quartet in
performances of the Beethoven Septet, in E-Flat, op. 20.6 The
following season on March 22, 1896 he was once again a
guest on a Kneisel Quartet concert, this time in New
York. On that occasion he played the Brahms Horn Trio
with Franz Kenisel, violin, and Rafael Joseffy, piano.
The Boston Journal reported: "Mr. Hackebarth in
the trio of Brahms was a worthy associate of such true
artists as Mr Kneisel and Mr. Joseffy. In quality of
tone, beauty of phrasing, and general musical feeling,
his performance was one of unusual merit."

On June 24, the Boston Journal announced: "The
Promenade Concert at Music Hall this evening promises to
add one more to the long list of excellent concerts. The
French Horn Quartet, composed of Mr. Hackebarth, Mr.
[Franz] Hain, Mr. [Carl] Schumann and Mr.
[Heinrich] Lorbeer, have been secured and will
play three selections. ...a. "In einem kühlen Grunde,"
Gluck, b. "Der frohe Wandersmann," Mendelssohn, c. "When
Evening's; Twilight," Hatton. The quartet made a second
appearance on June 30 (see advertisement at right). The
horn quartet performed again at a concert and party
celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth
of Franz Schubert, by the Orpheus Music Society on
February 6, 1897. The program consisted entirely of
Schubert melodies. The quartet played "Weihegesang",
"Der Lindenbaum"e;, ".Die Nacht", and accompanied the
Society in "Nachtgesang in Walde". For the summer Pop
concert conducted by Leo Shulz at the Music Hall on June
10, Mr. Hackebarth performed the Titl Serenade with Léon
Jacquet, flute, and the following week of the same
series the horn quartet appeared on June 18.

The Boston Herald, November 18, 1890

The Boston Herald, March 3, 1891

The Boston Herald, June 29, 1896

In the 1897-1898 season, Mr. Hackebarth once
again appeared with the Kneisel Quartet. On the first
program of the series on October 25 he assisted in the
Beethoven Quintet op. 18, and on January 31 in the
Schubert Octet in F, for which he received an "especial
compliment" in the Daily Advertiser for his
playing in the first movement. The Schubert was played
again on April 26 at the Harvard University Chamber
Concerts. On February 17 Mr. Hackebarth performed the
Brahms Trio at Mendelssohn Hall, New York, once again
with Messrs. Kneissel and Joseffy. The New York
Times reported, "Mr. Hackebarth played his horn
part with absolutely flawless technic [sic] and with
dignity of tone."

According to Howe, Mr. Hackebarth never appeared as a
soloist with the B.S.O.

Mr. Hackebarth served in the first chair of the B.S.O.
horn section until the 1905-1906 season when he shared
that position with Max
Hess. In 1907 Albert Hackebarth was moved to
seventh of eight horns, where he remained until he
retired at the end of the 1912-1913 season at the
age of sixty.

The Boston Herald, December3, 1900

Personal Life
In 1888 Mr. Hackebarth married Mathilde C. Dewes7 in
New York. Of this marriage the following children were
born:

Emilie Caroline Hackebarth, born November
8, 1888 in New York, became a stenographer in a law
office, later a librarian, and a clerk in an architect
office. She died in Massachusetts in September 1964.

Elsa M. Hackebarth, born October 25, 1890 in Boston,
made her living as a bank clerk and later as a school
teacher. She died in Brookline, Massachusetts,
November 1, 1971.

Mathilde Louise Hackebarth, August 7, 1892 in Boston,
was a kindergarten teacher. She died in Delaware
County, Pennsylvania on February 15, 1973.

Margarethe N. Hackebarth, was born ca. 1902 in Boston.

In 1895 Mr. Hackebarth purchased the house at 59 New
Atherton Street in the Roxbury section of Boston. Albert
Hackebarth died sometime between 1913 and 1920.
Afterwards Mathilde and her three elder daughters
remained at the Atherton Street address until after
1920, then moved to Beacon Street in Brookline,
Massachusetts.

Notes

1. Biographical information has been taken
from public records including Mr. Hackebarth's petition for U.S.
naturalization, ships lists, and censuses. There are several
discrepancies, primarily among the census records. Informants for
the census are not identified and could be household servants or
even neighbors with only partial acquaintance to the family. In
the 1900 census his birthdate is given as "Oct 1853" however other
sources are consistent with June 1854. Also in 1900 his occupation
is listed as "violinist" although no other sources have been found
that he played that instrument. It was common for horn players
trained in Germany to have also studied violin, so perhaps he
played it as an avocation. In addition to his wife and children,
his widowed mother, Emilia P. Hackbarth, born in February, 1833
and arriving in the U.S. in 1887 is listed in the census for 1900.
There is also listed a servant, Maria Lentz, age 23. In the 1910
census Mr. Hackebarth's Christian name is listed as "Heinrich D."
but the other family members and data listed affirm that this is
indeed the record for Albert. (back)

2. H.A. Gumpricht (probably Herman Amandus
Gumpricht, born in Frankenstein, Silesia, July 26, 1821, and died
in Boston April 14, 1891) was a legacy horn player whose main
occupation was as furrier in the Boston Area. He is found playing
in the later Germania Orchestra in 1873, under Carl Zerrahn, but
he was not one of the original Germanians of 1848. When he was
replaced by Mr. Hackebarth in 1882, he was in his sixties, and was
one of the twenty who did not return after the first season. The
first principal horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was Edward
Schormann (1842-ca.1908), playing in that capacity from 1881 to
1886 when he was replaced by Franz Xaver Reiter. Mr. Schormann had
also been active in the Boston area before the founding of the
B.S.O., as principal horn in Mr. Zarrahn's Germania Orchestra, the
Boston Philharmonic, and the Beethoven Quintette Club. With the
latter he performed the quintets of Mozart and Beethoven for winds
and piano, plus the Beethoven Sonata for Horn and Piano, op. 17,
all on one program on December 8, 1874. In the 1883-84 season he
once again performed the Beethoven Sonata, and also Schumann's
Adagio and Allegro, op. 70, both with Hiram G. Tucker, piano. He
was also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music.
(back)

3. Belgian oboist Felix Bour was imported by
Theodore Thomas to replace the Philharmonic's principal oboe,
Joseph Eller, in 1885. Since the Philharmonic was a Society,
however, he was blocked by the Musicians Mutual Protective Union
which required a six-months residency for alien musicians. Mr.
Bour was allowed to tour with Thomas's own orchestra since the
union only had jurisdiction in the city, but they forbade any
members from performing with him in New York and threatened
expulsion. In the ensuing litigation the union's restrictive
bylaws were struck down in the courts, although in 1890 they were
restored on appeal. (back)

4. With so much musical activity in New York,
the Reed Club did not attract large audiences. The reviews were
generally good, with the exception of the piano soloist on the
first concert: "Miss Virginia Rider gave the audience some of the
most uninteresting piano playing that has been heard in this city
in many moons. She successfully ossified three Chopin numbers, and
did much toward destroying the effect of Mozart's quintet in E
flat, for piano, oboe, clarionet, horn, and bassoon." (The New
York Times, March 2, 1889). Despite this excoriation, Miss
Rider appeared again on the Club's second concert the same month.
Apparently she had been practicing since the first concert,
because The New York Graphic reported: "Especially to Miss
Virginia Rider must praise be given for a thoroughly artistic and
conscientious rendering of the extremely difficult piano part of
the [Beethoven] quintet. That she is an artist of unusual powers
was also shown in her intelligent execution of the tarantelle by
Chopin." (back)

5. On November 22, 1890 the Club appeared at
the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia playing Andante and Scherzo from
the sextet by George Onslow. Mr. Hackebarth was probably not
present, however, since by then he was a member of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, which had a performance the same evening. On
the program was Weber's "Oberon" Overture. (back)

7.Georges Longy (1868 - 1930) studied oboe
with Georges Gillet at the Paris Conservatory where he took first
prize at age 18. He was a member of the Lamoureux Orchestra and at
age 20 became principal oboe of the Cologne Orchestra. In 1898 he
was made an Officer d'Academie by the French government. The
same year he came to in Boston to become principal oboe of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. He established himself as a conductor
in 1899 with the of the Boston Orchestral Club and founded the
Longy Club the following year. He was a member of if the Boston
Symphony Orchestra until 1925. In 1915 he founded the Longy
School of Music, now a part of Bard College, Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He also founded the Boston Musical Association in
1919, conducted the MacDowell Club Orchestra from 1915 to 1925,
and the Cecelia Society in 1916. Upon his retirement from the
B.S.O. he returned to France, abandoned the oboe, and operated
farm raising chickens and cattle. Mr. Longy died in France in
1930. (back)

8. Mathilde was born in New York on January
23, 1869. (This is the most consistent date in public records.
See note 1, above). Her father, Nicholas Dewes was born in
August, 1838 in Alsace-Lorraine. He came to the United States
prior to the start of the Civil War and served as a private in
Company C of the 20th New York Volunteer Infantry
fromn May 6, 1861 to February 12, 1863. Following the war he
made his living as a cigar maker. Mathilde's mother, after whom
she was named, was born in Germany in June, 1844 and came to the
U.S. in 1864. Nicholas and Mathilde Dewes were married in 1865
and had a total of six children. (back)